An important part of the process of developing new medicines is the conduct of clinical trials. Pharmaceutical companies developing new medicines engage doctors with experience in clinical research, known as clinical trial investigators, to conduct these clinical trials under controlled conditions. The quality, cost and speed of a clinical trial will naturally be dependent upon the investigator selected to conduct it.
The selection of an appropriate clinical trial investigator is a complex matter. An investigator is often selected based on their particular clinical experience and also whether previous trials they have performed have been of adequate quality, cost-effective and carried out with reasonable speed. Pharmaceutical companies typically keep records of the clinical trial investigators that they have used in the past to help with this selection process. However, these records are proprietary and therefore each company's records are naturally limited in their scope, covering only those clinical trial investigators that the company has historically used.